Quietly seething

[kitanzi]

I live and work in the South now. I'm a Damn Yankee to my coworkers, though they are polite about it. I know perfectly well that my lifestyle, were I dumb enough to talk about it at work, would label me a freak and a deviant.

Right. So, I'm sitting here quietly sick and furious at myself after the discussion that was underway when I came in. NYC has opened a high school for GLBT students. The consensus in this department, with NOT ONE DISSENTING VOICE, is apparently that not only is this ridiculous, but "those people" should take the consequences of their choice of sexuality, and having children exposed to homosexuals will only corrupt them and cause them to be homosexual. Further (and coming from a half dozen black women, this seems the cream of it to me), "People should live with the laws as they are and not try to get new ones made to give them any more rights." They consider themselves very progressive for allowing "those people" to do what they want in their own homes, as long as they don't have kids or in any way affect the upbringing of any kids, since everyone knows that's what makes kids gay, and that's a terrible thing to any right thinking Christian.

I'm not making any of this up, and I don't know if I'm angrier at them, or at myself for sitting here and shutting up. Mostly I feel sick. I genuinely think that if I made the comments I made above, it would start a shitstorm that would end in me apologizing for everything I said (that I believed, and that would make me more sick than just not talking), or being fired for making trouble and being "racist".

I like these people, though I was considering just yesterday how none of them really feel like friends. Some of this was coming from the one person here that I seriously respect. I knew I didn't fit here - I had not had my face slammed into it quite so hard before, though.

Comments

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm a master of keeping my mouth shut. I did it in Boston where my (in-law) family and many coworkers had serious racial preudices, and I do it down here, where I am the minority (pagan, bisexual, polyamorous, kinky), and the current of social and political thought does not flow in my direction.

Some of the worst, most prejudiced statements I've ever heard have come out of the mouths of women, gay people, pagan people, etc.-- and that doesn't mean I've never heard them from White Males, but I'm often genuinely surprised (though I shouldn't be any more) when people whose differences make them the targets of prejudice do not say, "There but for the grace of [insert deity or icon here] go I." And every single one of us has differences that could open us up to being the target of prejudice.

Another point to remember-- and please, people, do not flame me for these observations: Atlanta has a very interesting Black-White dynamic. Even though black people are classed as a minority, the City of Atlanta, more than any other city I've ever lived in, is pretty much black owned and operated. My sense of many of the Atlanta-born black people that I've met, especially while I was doing that music teaching job a couple of years ago, where I had to deal with various beaurocracies in the City of Atlanta, is that the kinds of points of view you're hearing in your office are common and accepted: Atlanta's black population is confident in its place, yet still views itself as an underclass. Atlanta is a place where you just about have to be a minority to get a city contract, you just about have to be homeless to qualify for things like reduced income housing (I would not be able to get free or reduced income housing in the City of Atlanta, for example), the department of social services has been known to write down that a house is filthy because the coffee table isn't dusted, yet you just about have to be black to be elected Mayor. It's not just the south you're experiencing, although if you went out into the Boondocks, you'd see those attitudes from folks black and white alike, it's the south viewed through the very strange lens of Atlanta.

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

PS: I think it is very easy, when you live somewhere else, to say that all the things wrong with the south are simply to do with its being the south, "where ignorant rednecks, the KKK, and conservative Bible-bangers run everything." It's very easy to shake your head at things that happen hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away from where you live and decide that it's not your problem or that you can wash your hands of it because you live someplace else, and "those things don't happen here." One, the reality of the south is far more complex and difficult to categorize; and two, those things /do/ happen there. In the same ways that New Yorkers are looked upon by the rest of the country as being callous and brusque and as likely to kill you as look at you, southerners as a group are considered ignorant and backward. There are liberals and progressives and openminded people down here, too-- we just don't have much say in the government, because we are in the minority.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

You'd know a lot more about it than I would - if you have a few minutes tonight, I'd love to talk to you about it?

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Or sometime - I just realized you have very timeconsuming plans for tonight. :)